eBay UK Tries out New Homepage Design Following US Tests

eBay conducted an unannounced test of a new homepage design in the U.S. in mid-May and is now testing a new homepage design in the UK. On Monday, eBay UK gave readers notice of the testing on its Announcement page.

"From Monday 28 May, we'll be testing an updated home page design for a few weeks. Depending on how the test goes, we may make this a permanent change. We welcome your feedback - click Tell us what you think on the right-hand side of the page."

Because eBay gave no advance warning to U.S. users, some users who saw elements of the home page moving to different positions and then back again believed it was due to glitches. On another discussion thread, a confused user wrote, "Ive (sic) been gone all day and cmae (sic) home to find a new looking eBay home page and even after signing in there was no discussion board or groups to be found. I had to Google to find them! Is this a sign of thigns (sic) to come or is this a glitch??"

Some users said they couldn't find the link to the discussion forums because the link to the "Community" portal was moved from the top of the page to the bottom during the testing, and others said they didn't like the changes eBay made to the Advanced Search feature during the testing.

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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